Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2010/February

Releasing Material
Hello, this is in response to your query about The Entrepreneur's Almanac. I am an attorney and this is a handbook created by the Maryland State Bar Association. I have been asked to post this for the public and for attorney's to add to and modify using your Wikibooks forum. Please let me know what authorization you need from us so that it can be published. Im not that familiar with how the structure works here and I need guidance. You can reach me either here on the wiki discussion or at 410-385-4233.

Thank you, Bill McComas Esq.


 * I have moved this from my talk page as it is better here. QU TalkQu 23:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hello Bill, if the material is already licensed under an acceptable copyleft license or is public domain, then just provide a link (to a web site if possible) to the original source, or to the copyright holder's web site where the license is stated. Although it is on Wikipedia, the policy here is pretty much the same so these pages |requesting copyright permission and this one are useful. QU TalkQu 23:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

How To Beat The Draft Board says "This document may be freely redistributed without any restrictions." Is that a problem?
Hi,

When User:DraftBoard wrote the first revision of the "How To Beat The Draft Board" table of contents, s/he included the sentence "This document may be freely redistributed without any restrictions." That sentence is still there. Do those words mean that the text might not really be GFDLed or Creative Commons licensed?


 * If so, maybe someone should try to contact the author via User Talk and Special:Emailuser, and if s/he doesn't reply after a month or so, a Wikibookian who has their own website should move the book to their own website. If you'd like me to do it, leave a message on my enwiki talk page.


 * If not, someone should remove the sentence in question.

Cheers, --Unforgettableid (talk) 16:51, 9 February 2010 (UTC)


 * You are correct. Our licenses impose certain limitations (the GFDL more than the CC) and that makes the phrasing contradictory as you state above. That doesn't change the validity of the content, since contributors are informed about the licenses this project uses before committing any contribution. One could argue that it was somehow an extension of normal licenses (nothing new we used dual licensing before, but of compatible nature), it could be discusser and agreed upon by that project community but would require at least a clear statement to be included on the work...
 * In any case I removed the phrase. --Panic (talk) 18:41, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Red Link
Hi, I just added a page to the JavaScript book (before I logged in). But it looks like I clicked a bad redlink and the page didn't get put in the JavaScript book. I don't see any way to move it to the right location, short of blanking the old page and creating a new one. Could somebody move the page please?

Thanks! -- Ken g6 (talk) 20:48, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * You should see a "move" tab above the page to the right of the "history" tab. This page describes the operation: Help:Pages. This will make a redirect page from the old page to the new one. I have seen it done without a redirect, but I think only people with admin privileges can do that. Recent Runes (talk) 21:11, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * No, I don't see such a tab. It seems like on some wikis one has to have a certain number of edits before one can move a page.  It appears I have one mainspace edit, maybe that's why I don't see it? &mdash; Ken g6 (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I have moved that page now, but I couldn't see the other page with the bad link, so I leave correcting that up to you. Recent Runes (talk) 22:06, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * You do have to have a certain number of edits and have an account at least four days old to move a page. -- Adrignola talk contribs 22:34, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks to both of you! It looks like this might be a wiki bug.  On JavaScript/Anonymous Functions for instance, if I click the redlink for the next page, it tries to edit Closures, not JavaScript/Closures.  Also weird on that page: the previous link, which should have been a redlink, goes to the index. Anyway, thanks again for the help! &mdash; Ken g6 (talk) 22:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Edit: Note that the page before my original problem page fixed itself once you moved the page. &mdash; Ken g6 (talk) 22:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't say I understand it, but I guess you will be safe if you go back to the JavaScript page and create new pages from the red links there. Recent Runes (talk) 23:43, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * This is a design flaw in Template:Prognav. (If I were being generous, I might call it a design limitation; at any rate, it's certainly not just a bug, which could be fixed once identified.)  Prognav is trying to cover several different cases, in a rather ad hoc way.  The logic says that, to decide what page the Next link should go to,
 * First look for an existing page called " Programming/ " &mdash; here, the first argument is "JavaScript", and the third argument  is "Closures", but there is no existing page called "JavaScript Programming/Closures".
 * If that didn't find an existing page, look for an existing page called {{nowrap|" }/ "}} &mdash; here, that name would be "JavaScript/Closures", but again there is no existing page called that.
 * If neither of those names found an existing page, then assume that the correct page name is just " ", and don't even bother to check whether or not any such page exists.  So the page name is assumed to be just "Closures".
 * The simplest fixes are to either use a different navigation template, or, if you must use, never use it to specify a Next (or Previous) link to a page that doesn't already exist. --Pi zero (talk) 23:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
 * In the commercial world, we would call this problem a feature of course! There are simpler templates doing a similar job like Template:C_Programming/Navigation, though this would need to be adapted as it contains "C Programming" as a hard-coded string. Recent Runes (talk) 13:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

PDF version
I was wondering if anyone could take a look at File:Kings and Queens of England test.pdf and give some advice or suggestions. Thanks,  The New  Mikemoral  ♪♫ 03:47, 19 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it would definitely be useful to have a PDF version like this, if only to provide a stable version which has been checked. You could always make it more elaborate later, if you wanted to put in the hours. Perhaps the front page text could be bigger, so that people can read it if they are browsing the Commons category. PDF_Wikibooks


 * I put a similar vague kind of author credit in the File:French.pdf book recently, which has the issue that the main contributers are no longer active and never made much effort to credit themselves when they were active. I am still looking for a form of words which expresses the reality without putting people off too much.


 * There is a category, a template and a page listing the books and associated files at PDF versions. Recent Runes (talk) 00:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I have increased the size of the title so it is even readable at 20% in OpenOffice.org. Any other suggestions? --The New Mikemoral (talk) 01:03, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I see some of the pages are all text but have space for more illustrations. You could perhaps include more period details like coats of arms, royal jewelry, weapons etc. see Coats_of_arms_of_England A recent article on the BBC website showed Richard III's boar emblem, which might interest children if there are publicly available images. You could also look at changing the font to something more elaborate like URW Chancery L which is available in OpenOffice 2.3.0. Recent Runes (talk) 10:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I have OO.o 3.2.0 and I do not have that font. Is there a link to it? I'll add some coat of arms if I can find a few. --The New Mikemoral (talk) 00:41, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Here is a link showing what the font looks like. I don't have such a wide range in my OpenOffice so you might have something more suitable in yours. Recent Runes (talk) 09:49, 21 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The URW fonts cost money and I'd rather use free DejaVu fonts (free book, free font). I have the DejaVu fonts, I think I'll go with DejaVu Serif Condensed. --The New Mikemoral (talk) 19:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Is this Project Appropriate for WikiBooks?
I am a part of a group of students who in the late 1960s and early 1970s edited a student newspaper at NYU, Washington Square Journal. It was an important newspaper of the day, a turbulent time on campus in the heyday of protests against the Vietnam War. Several of its editors have gone on to become prominent journalists and authors (including winners of Pulitzer Prizes and other awards), and have achieved other distinctions.

One of the former editors has written a history of the Washington Square Journal. I would like to post it on WikiBooks and invite the others involved in the newspaper at the time to edit it.

Strictly speaking, this is not a textbook. Is it appropriate for a WikiBooks project, or should we use another platform? If so, any recommendations? We would like to stay within the Wikimedia framework if possible. Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pfrishauf (talk • contribs).


 * Well before figuring out which Wikimedia project is best for the work, you will need to be sure you have permission to license the work under Terms of Use from whoever holds the copyright to the work you wish to post. If the work has been previously published and if the copyright holder is willing to license it I think maybe an unedited version of the work could be included in Wikisource. A edited version might be appropriate for Wikibooks or Wikiversity depending on the intent. Do you intend to provide a neutral perspective of the journal's history? If the answer is yes I think Wikibooks might be an appropriate place to write it. If the answer is no Wikiversity is likely to be more appropriate. If you are unsure you can try here, and if the Wikibooks community later decides it is inappropriate the work can always be moved to Wikiversity later. --dark lama  23:58, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

copyvio tagging regarding Wikipedia (in particular)
I recently noticed a copyvio tag on a small bit of content that was duplicated from Wikipedia, that in itself seemed weird, because there are many of reasons against doing so and not a single justifiable merit of putting usable content in the death row that the copyvio tag has been turned into recently... The particular event in itself is not of major importance, the low quantity of content almost prevented me to bring this to a brother discussion, in any case what I'm opposed is to the practice. In as fewer words as I can condense it. I proceeded by reverting the tagged page to the previous version (the initial contributor was anonymous), made some simple changes to the wording to conform to the topic at hand (since the original article was differently focused) and fixed the wikilinks, then informed the tagger with a smaller rational behind my action and opened myself to discuss the issue if he disagreed with me, that particular issue was then "resolved" by the tagger by re-tagging the page as to enforce his initial action, this is in it self a bad outcome, as the quicker outcome would be a reversing war and by disregarding my opposition to the initial action it raised the bar to have it broadly analyzed. The first point and one I have already raised some attention before is that the copyvio tag was edited to confer the tagged content a validity of 7 days, this without any approval from the community and deeply changing the process how we deal with copyright violations. The addition of this limit (probably based on the general notion that 7 days is a significant delay to get an outcome) is extremely shortsighted and permits removal of unique content without due process of verification, since the copyvio to my knowledge has never been used by a copyright owner to have his content removed but solely as a preemptively step to protect the project against suspected violation of the copyright of others, in this case we act as presuming the contributor guilty and put on him the burden of proving the accuser wrong, this may seem as a simple way to address the issue but step back and analise all the implication, consider the havoc this could snowball into. But my main concern in this is that 7 days aren't enough, this is the minimum time-frame we accept for decisions, in this cases it isn't helping anyone working toward benefiting the project and we should assume that the contributor did have a good motivation behind the contribution. The second issue is that not all content is copyrightable, people using the copyvio tag should understand this. Facts, measurements, quantities, and simple descriptions (architectural works were only recognized as copyrightable in the US in 1990), small phrases, formating edits, spell corrections any thing that doesn't consist in a substantial literary expression isn't copyrightable (this should be generally valid worldwide). This is how we can have projects like Wikipedia and Wikinews (disregarding other legalities). The rational to require attribution of other Wikimedia projects, especially inside the Wikimedia ecosystem, should not be used to scare off users and prevent useful evolution of the projects, the need for attribution is extremely important outside of Wikimedia but not as important inside due to the way work is done and how it is done (this could be further explored if people don't understand it), consider simple the simple fact that it was not always possible to preserve edit histories... The last issue is that tagging copied content from other Wikimedia projects (or even other repositories that are clearly compatible in licensing to Wikibooks). By tagging this type of content in such a way, one is simply promoting deletion, this is shortsighted, if we already know the content can be used, then the only conflict is attribution. Why not fix it by an edit of your own if it annoys you, add the attribution or transwiki the content, don't annoy other users (not only the editor that put the content, but every reader) that probably don't even understand the issue. If you have the time to educate do so, if not just ignore it. If the copyright owner has a problem it would be easily fixed it will not be as problematic as using prohibitive content (the reason why preemptive action is needed on those cases). So please avoid tagging usable content as copyvio at least until people remove the 7 days limit if for no other reason. --Panic (talk) 04:13, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This looks like me. For those scratching their heads, wondering what triggered this: I tagged a module about a week ago along with a bunch of others over at Physics Course for copying content over from Wikipedia. The contributor was naturally notified and directed to WB:RFI. Yesterday, Panic2k4 removes the tag without an edit summary but a note on my talk page. I responded before re-addeding the tag. That tag was later removed by the module contributor. I reverted and warned the user.
 * Panic2k4, no-one ignored you. You didn't show how the content was anything but a violation of Wikipedia's license and so I re-added the tag. Copyvios don't get a pass just because they're "usable". --Swift (talk) 07:50, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * What part of what I say above you don't understand this time?
 * The copyvio tag is abusive in these instances, especially since it now "imposes" a deadline of seven days. If you are indeed attempting to solve the issue, I've now explained why tagging with the copyvio is a bad approach and you still haven't put forward a good reason to continue to do so. In any case what irked me personally regarding that event was your "reversion" of my "reversion", again not cool especially because of past events regarding reversions and you being aware that I'm always open for dialog, that for me was perceived as heavy-handed and intentional...
 * Just for the record my action concerned just that page (and that content). I've now become aware that the user in question did similar actions on other pages (of the same project at least) and recently in what I see as an attempted resolve the copyvio tags have reworded the content so tagged, again this is as extremely bad example on how to pressure users to comply with best our practices and my rational above continues to be valid, even if the user is working in bad faith, what I still don't believe. You could have fixed it easily (even more being an admin), or just ignored it, time in this cases is not of importance. Exacerbating the copyright issue in the present way is abusive even on the expectations most contributors to Wikipedia place on the work they do, in any case the content you tagged on that particular page wasn't copyrightable. But as I said the event itself is a frivolity what I'm attempting to address is the practices not the event as no content was really lost. --Panic (talk) 08:42, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I "fixed" one of the Physics Course modules that was tagged by importing Electromagnetic spectrum, deleteing the module here, moving the imported page onto the deleted module then making some changes to make it look like a book. I could have done these for all of them but I was busy doing other stuff. I agree in principle a copyvio is the wrong tag for this kind of problem, but we don't have the huge array of tags WP has and nor, I would argue, do we need them. With such a small number of admins most come across most types of "problem" at some point and are therefore able to deal with it appropriately. By this I mean, for example, at WP you have admins who only deal with image deletions and wouldn't have a clue about how to investigate a textuxal copyvio or what the rules are - that shouldn't happen here. Personally I only tag for copyvio on a clearcut copyright violation and I actually think it should be deleted immediately, not in seven days. Where someone has clearly copy / paste text, from another site (in some cases they even give the URL) that has an incompatible license I think it should be deleted straight away. More generally I'd say we could do with a beefing up of some of the guides to what is and isn't acceptable (both for the use of contributors and admins). QU TalkQu 08:59, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * My opinion is that the copyvio works for reporting suspected violations or those needing confirmation. Copyright owners wishing to have content removed should just ask for administrative action, they will then be informed on how to proceed from there (verification of claims). In the particular cases I point out above (compatible licensing but failing to give acknowledgment and other easy fixable issues) the copyvio tag should not be used and the issue could even be ignored (not good, but no real damage is being done, we don't have to be preemptive).
 * I rarely used the tag and only use when I don't see an easy fix (even yesterday I tagged one page and it was immediately deleted, no 7 days waiting for resolution). Even so one should step back and see that if all participants are in good faith it could be beneficial for the project to provide some more time (there should be a balance between the risk of contamination and the time given, the tag itself could be rewritten to include a clear warning not to copy content from that page), since if contacted the copyright owner could possibly agree to licensing the content. I have been successful in getting content for Wikibooks in that way several times. It must be carefully pondered up, the thing with the 7 days is plainly bad thinking and it changed policy (the deletion policy, the copyright page doesn't mention any time limitation) without validation from the community. --Panic (talk) 09:14, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You're right, QU. Copyvios should be deleted on the spot. I guess I was trying to be more accommodating but the content needs to be deleted at some point and so one might as well do it right away and let a nice note to the contributor do. I also agree that we need to put some of our best common practices down in writing somewhere. --Swift (talk) 11:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I would be extremely worried if that was turned into practice but wouldn't attempt to block the change of procedure if the community sees it as beneficial (I doubt that many would agree with it). The only thing I would require is that some form of log would be kept on the deletions made under this presumption of guilt. This log would have to include at least the page(s) deleted, word count, presumable source and acting admin.
 * The risk of contaminating free content would be eliminated completely (that is the only advantage). On the other hand it would also increase the level or errors and the need to undelete content and not all copyright violations are equal, as the examples I give above, and why this discussion was initiated and even other more complex issues, for instance the C++ Programming book was at a time tagged as a copyvio with several admins promoting deletion, so I'm extremely critical of trusting the common sense of others, to act preemptively, probably unilaterally on such issues.
 * We should protect the project but within reason, we aren't required to volunteer our work protecting other peoples interests in detriment of the evolution of the project, even more because our content is highly volatile and ever changing an issue today has an high probability of not being an issue tomorrow... --Panic (talk) 04:21, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been looking for more information on the several issues raised on this discussion, and others that have occurred on similar issues covering the issue of copyvio on viable content (but not attributed), pros and cons and deletions in general. One interesting page for the posts and views expressed is Deletion management redesign (historical page). I've several ideas for proposals to make the proceedings more transparent to the community and more protective against unneeded deletions. One issue that I found strange is that there isn't a way to search the Special logs for the comments (in this case I was specially interested on the Special:Log/delete). For example to check all deletions with a copyvio comment (probably not all the copyvio deletion but most of them) I would have to compile all the logs from Wikibookians with sysop flags since the start of the project and search on the results (only practical with a script). Is there a workaround ? Or has anyone already done any work on such a script? --Panic (talk) 10:58, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

PDF versions of featured books
Some featured books have quite nice PDF versions, but they are generally about 3 years old now and I think this creates a bad impression. Perhaps we should consider making the PDF versions a bit less prominent if they get too long in the tooth.

The PDF versions I have seen were created by users who seem inactive now, but I think the books have generally continued to progress, if not at the original pace. Has the knowledge of how to do this been forgotten, or was it though to be too much hard work for the value of the final result? The OpenOffice template by Hagindaz talks about pasting in text under each level 5 heading, which seems like a marathon task for the longer books.

I know you can download a PDF version which is made automatically, but these lack pagination and are generally less polished. If it were possible for the system-generated PDF to start each module on a new page, I think that would be a worthwhile improvement. Recent Runes (talk) 18:25, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * That would be nice. A book on how to make well polished PDF books out of wiki-based books would also be nice. --dark lama  18:49, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The help pages for polishing are Help:Collections for the PDF-generation and Help:Print versions for the print versions. The problem with the PDF-generation is that advanced polishing would consist of finding work-a-rounds for all the formatting errors of the PDF-generation (however, these formatting errors change as long as the PDF-generation is under development). Polishing print versions requires quite some work. After I started with the template, I realized that I want to adjust the automatic page breaks to avoid page breaks right after section headings. I did this by including an empty-line template that I only "activate" (by editing it) for printing. (This empty-line template makes only sense for the specific paper format and font size that I'm using for printing; thus, it should usually be deactivated. A better solution could be based on  but the required functionality is not supported by many browsers.) Once I had page numbers, I also wanted to have the page numbers in a table of contents. I'm doing this now by including the page numbers manually. (You can see the results here.) Overall, I'm not happy with the process. Therefore, I never included my approach in the help pages. --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:49, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * A book is much more in depth than any help page. Wikibooks has Using Wikibooks and Editing Wikitext for example. I was thinking of something along the lines of how to generate PDFs with OpenOffice and other programs, how to edit PDFs, various techniques that people have found useful for polishing and improving the quality of PDFs, and the advantages, disadvantages, limitations, problems, and work arounds encountered when using each program for making PDFs. Such a book could be useful for helping people to understand how they too can make quality PDFs, and help people decide which program to use. --dark lama  12:17, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's possible to use templates to create page breaks when printing from the browser, then print the print version to a software printer that converts it to a PDF. However that suffers from requiring manual updating.  The system-generated PDF does add in page breaks for new chapters (lines in the collection with a semicolon) but not for individual pages (lines in the collection starting with a colon).  It seems like it would be an easy tweak but it would take some time for it to be made since few projects other than Wikibooks use this feature. -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:30, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * A print version page in the French book contains:

=Information=

=Lesson 0.01 - Introduction=

=Lesson 0.02 - Learning French=

(shown here without its line-feeds). Are you saying that page breaks can be added between the lessons here, to format the overall print version? Recent Runes (talk) 20:12, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, you can use for print version page breaks.  That works only for printing, not for PDF generation.  Unless you "print" to a PDF, which has to be redone every time an edit is made to any page of the book. -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:26, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've managed to produce a PDF of French by printing from Firefox to postscript then using the ps2pdf command in Linux. I was thinking of uploading the file, but I seem to be directed to Commons rather than Wikibooks which is where the old versions are. Are books stored in Commons now? Recent Runes (talk) 18:30, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes. --Martin Kraus (talk) 21:25, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I uploaded the PDF file to Commons, but the link to the book [[Media:French.pdf|French]] still points to the old description page. Do all the old PDF files need to be transferred to Commons and the local copies need to be deleted? Recent Runes (talk) 22:18, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * You should have gone to the file page and clicked on "upload a new version of this file". You can still upload new versions of existing files locally.  Please note where the new file is so we can delete the one here with a link to the new file in the deletion log and so we can fix the link to the PDF in the book. -- Adrignola talk contribs 02:23, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry I can't see the "upload a new version of this file" option on the [[Media:French.pdf]] page. The only option seems to be "Upload file" which takes me to Commons, so I don't seem to have any ability to upload PDF files to Wikibooks. Recent Runes (talk) 16:32, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Would it be because you're accessing the file directly via [[Media:French.pdf]], rather than the description page at File:French.pdf? If you still can't do it from the latter page, what does it say when you try it directly? -- Adrignola talk contribs 03:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've tested it and I also don't see the option. Direct displays the "Insufficient permissions" special page. [[Media:French.pdf]] just initiate the download... --Panic (talk) 11:07, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Wasn't it decided some months ago that uploads should be restricted on Wikibooks? Thus, I guess the way to go is to upload the PDF to Commons and to change the links on Wikibooks appropriately. --Martin Kraus (talk) 11:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * When I try the direct Wikibboks link I just get the message "The action you have requested is limited to users in one of the groups: Administrators, Uploaders.". Basically I don't have the ability to make a description page which shows the old and new versions, so I think I need admin assistance to help sort it out. Recent Runes (talk) 16:14, 7 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, I see the permission at Special:ListGroupRights is reupload-own, so you can only overwrite the file if you were the one who uploaded it previously. And I see you uploaded the file with the same name at Commons, so I'll just delete the local copy here and be done with this. -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)


 * If interested, you may prefer javalatex, which is mostly automatic but allows manual polish and refinement. There are also some PDF source files which can be updated. --hagindaz (talk) 22:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, the results you achieved in 2006/7 were very nice, but I thought I might need to spent a long time learning Latex which would distract me from other work. Also, the actual material in the French book being incomplete I thought spending a lot of time on the presentation wasn't really justified, particularly if the files mainly exist outside Wikibooks and significant rework is needed for each new PDF version. If the ordinary print version was spruced up as much as possible, then that seemed easier to carry forward into the future. Of course, if you or anyone else would like to make a smarter PDF of French then please go ahead. I just thought that it being a featured book, French should have a reasonably up-to-date PDF to show that some people still cared about it. Recent Runes (talk) 23:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Deleting pages of seldom-used books
I'm trying to wrap my head around the procedure for deletion of pages for being outside the scope of the particular book, with an eye toward Wikijunior. As I understand it, this is considered inappropriate for WB:RFD, and I gather it is supposed to fall under Speedy Deletion Criterion 4. But Wikijunior in recent times is a pretty quiet place, with few editors about at any given time, which seems to me to make the concept of a quorum for consensus on this rather problematic.

Some questions: --Pi zero (talk) 13:39, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * What standards are reasonably expected for forming a book-specific consensus for this? In particular,
 * How many contributors, with what relationship to the book, can reasonably constitute a quorum for this (and is it possible for a book with few currently active contributors to be fundamentally incapable of supporting such a quorum)?
 * Does it make sense to advertise a local discussion of this sort, say at Reading room/Projects (or somewhere else, and if so, where) &mdash; or would the users attracted by that be considered ineligible for inclusion in the quorum for such a decision?


 * I think I would attempt to look at the specific circumstances of a specific book in making any call. Ideally a majority of people who have actively contributed to a book within the last month would participate in any decision to delete a page from a book. I don't think I would ignore or discount anyone's opinion though. Books are meant to be read by readers, so if readers decide to chime in I think I would consider there opinions to be just as important as any writers. If there are people volunteering to work on a page who have not done so up to now I would consider there opinions as well. I think the reasons are more important than the who, but I think people who contribute to the book, use the book, and read the book have a greater stake in what happens to the book and are more motivated to find solutions, than anyone who has not contributed, has not used the book, and is not going to read it. I think common sense comes into play as well. If a few people are suggesting deletion and there is a group of people actively contributing to the page, I think census is clear people are not interested in deletion. Discussion is by no means the only way to show what the consensus is. I also believe that at times if people seem to have reached a decision but have not attempted to act on it that that can show a new consensus as well. I think I would be very hesitant to act on any show of consensus if it was a bit dated and there was recent activity for example. I think that a good faith assumption that consensus might of changed even if there is no discussion to that effect is reasonable to assume in some cases.
 * I think a reasonable attempt should be made to attract discussion on a book's discussion page first before advertising outside the book. If there is no book activity, I would say the decision is up to any person who takes an interest in the book, they can either be bold and do what they want, or seek feedback from the Wikibooks community. I think administrators though should err on the side of caution and keep works that are within Wikibooks' scope even if there is some question as to whether the work is within a book's scope. In other words, when in doubt don't do anything that any user couldn't undo.
 * I don't think the standard for book-specific consensus is really any different from community consensus. I think the only difference is there will likely be fewer people who participate in the consensus process. Anyone can join in, any reasonable argument should be considered and count towards figuring out what the consensus is, and anyone can decide to work on improving pages rather than get involved in a discussion which should be considered too when deciding what the consensus is. --dark lama  15:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Distinguishing between good and bad books
In a [ recent comment] on a RFD discussion, NumberTheorist wanted to discuss further why we keep stubs despite making books that are more useful to readers harder to find. As the RFD isn't the right place to discuss such a general case, I figured I'd respond here.

Essentially, any book that can be of use to future contributors is kept. As the hurdle of choosing a topic and starting a book can be high for future contributors, a simple structure can extremely useful. As NumberTheorist has noticed, there are lots of these stubs lying around and I can understand his frustration. Bear in mind, however, that since Wikibooks is primarily about (collaboratively) creating books, we're going to have plenty of undeveloped or developing books around. These need to be made accessible to potential contributors. Furthermore, the simple existence of undeveloped books does not necessarily make developed books hard to find. Wikijunior only has developed books on its front page and the mathematics bookshelf shows books' development stages.

The mathematics subject page doesn't look terribly attractive and seems less accessible than the bookshelf. I wish anyone working on the huge task of getting these subject pages working all the best. Just keep in mind that books can (and should, where appropriate) be placed in multiple subject pages. --Swift (talk) 11:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * So what isn't working with the subject pages? I came up with a possibility for showing progress of books in my sandbox some time back, despite the subjectivity involved.  Is the layout Darklama came up with (see Subject:Computing) superior?  I heard a lot of complaints about the subject pages but not many solutions; that's frankly frustrating.  I'm more than happy to spend the time updating all the subject pages if a superior solution is found.  I once had a manager who said not to complain about something unless you also had a solution to it. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:26, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Wow! Where did this come from? No-one is attacking your work, Adrignola. --Swift (talk) 15:53, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I didn't believe anyone was either. The subject pages aren't my work; Whiteknight came up with the original template.  I'm interested in improving them.  The sandbox page offers a possibility for addressing this issue, distinguishing between good and bad books.  And I did say I wouldn't have a problem making changes to improve things.  You said the subject pages weren't working.  I'm interested to know how so and what can be done.  My comments shouldn't be interpreted as having any hostility to them or towards yourself. -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think we should quit calling them "good" or "bad". Stubs aren't bad - they're just not very complete.  If we could find a way to work development stages into the subject pages, maybe that would help.  Also, categorizing them by completeness will be viewed by the contributors as far less antagonistic. --Jomegat (talk) 16:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think we should quit calling pages and books "complete" or "incomplete" too. I think we should reexamine what it is we are attempting to do by using stages. I think we are attempting to determine the coverage level of pages and books, in which case this could probably be automated a bit by taking advantage of |flagged&rvlimit=1&format=jsonfm json. --dark lama  17:39, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think each book should decide for itself what the development stages mean in its case (see Japanese/Kanji for an example). I don't quite see how it can be automated. --Swift (talk) 14:29, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Did you take a look at the json link I included? The json output is what FlaggedRevs reports back as the ratings for a current revision of a page. The only automated part would be to use that information to display the little status indicator using javascript. Coverage levels are book dependent as well, so I don't see the problem. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:16, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Littered stubs are always a problem with wikis. Writing actual content that covers a full page can take time, which may already be divided among other tasks (such as work, education, or other similar wikis), and may require the person to already be an expert in the field. The result is books that either contain a few pages in the Table of Contents, or many pages with very little information (from editors that make a quick pass.) The only way to deal with stubs is to add to them whenever you see them, and we already have a standard for page completeness within a book.  It could be ported to the Subjects pages, where you can list stub-quality or incomplete books, but that requires some backlinks to make it easier to update.  --Sigma 7 (talk) 16:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * This discussion is covering to many related subject to be clear what is really is being discussed.
 * Regarding good or bad books the only qualification I recognize is what described in What is Wikibooks? policy as an expression of the community's will, I will express my personal opinion regarding the content but I would not impose my view of what is useful or good on any contributor and will look with some disdain to the actions of Wikibookians that haven't provided any content to judge or impair other volunteers to attempt to contribute content. "Bad" content is better than no content at all, content is the core of this project, and bad content can always be improved.
 * Regarding stubs, we have been extremely inconstant on how we categorize them, probably due to each stub having several categorizations regarding age, the creator, scope, structure and content, the Deletion policy even defines that "In general, keep stubs that can be improved on, but delete stubs that are too narrowly defined or do not have a decent definition of what it is about." so admins could in fact delete stubs without a RFD, we are extremely fortuned that no one has decided to proceed with unilateral deletions, probably some work to incorporate the common practice into the policy is in order, we rarely delete stubs (as any page created that has some intelligible content regarding the title of the page, some exceptions are known like the copyvio discussion) I still remember some admins waging a war on red links so the situation has improved never the less) as we have now extended the "Meaningful content" to include meaningful structure (even if empty of useful content), these last works have mostly been saved on RFD but it depends mostly on the community attention and good will, personally I do not support keeping stubs with only structure that have been stale for more than a year and will always support anyone on a vote to keep stubs in the first RFD...
 * Regarding adding stubs to Categories I haven't any issues and they should be promoted there I would even regard as useful a new effort to categorize those works under a new category (IIRC this practice has been abandoned), on the other hand using Subjects to list stubs to my view is polluting the well, we already suffer for information overload and diluting the usable content we have seems an extremely bad idea (contributors are a minority of our userbase), I don't see that promoting mere concepts next to usable content as beneficial and an incentive to participation.
 * On the topic of Subjects I recently noticed that an alteration had occurred, to what I'm opposed but will not at this time attempt to change. Today a book (cover/toc) page displays Subjects: on the top of the page (but the links provided goes into categories). This behavior is not expected and for me wanted. Now a user will not have direct access to the related subject page. Whiteknight even had included more useful concepts like minimum requirements etc., this information is now obstructed from users, subjects are important to seek other books on the same subject (and related subjects) and having Categories displayed on the root is somehow redundant and they are hard to read (even with the improvements added, here the font change on focus flickers a lot, and long page names are unreadable). It is also confusing to see the line indicate subject and all links are going to the categories.
 * Innovations for the mere sake of innovations are mere distractions, as always I'm extremely vocal on putting the content above format. On another tone we have to recognize the extreme effort done to make Categories work, but it seems to me that people haven't yet come to grips or have forgotten the distinction that was intentioned for Subject pages. Categories are for contributors, Subjects are for readers. As a contributor I rarely use the Categories and prefer to navigate using the [list by prefix], this is why I also disfavor redirect pages). --Panic (talk) 05:33, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

A More Efficient Prime Number Generating Algorithm and original research
Hello, I wonder about this book. It seems to be original research in some ways. The first bit is stuff you might learn in an intro to programming course and then he talks about things he developed starting in 1984 under the heading PG7.8. Any way, so I don't know if it's original research but it seems to be. There are no references at all and he talks as if he's the one who has developed this idea though I didn't read it real carefully. So, what is the policy for this? I understand that original research does not belong here but I do not know anything beyond that. Thanks. NumberTheorist (talk) 17:19, 14 February 2010 (UTC)


 * It does, indeed, seem like that. I don't think it's original research in the sense that it is presenting some new truth; I haven't bothered going through the code or running it, but as long as it builds on established techniques, it should be fine. I've copyedited it to make it sound a little less like an academic paper (removed stuff like "my code") and moved it to Efficient Prime Number Generating Algorithms. --Swift (talk) 14:18, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, sounds good. One thing I thought of was merging it into one of the books on algorithms.  But, I asked on the talk page of Algorithms to see if they thought it would fit in that book and no response yet.  There is also Algorithm Implementation which has prime number generating algorithms in it but the book seems to be more about just having an algorithm than having the best one.  I will ask on that talk page too to see what they think.  The thing is, by itself it's not a book.  It's like a short article.  And, most of it is code.  --NumberTheorist (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The only problem is that Algorithms is a book on techniques, but Efficient Prime Number Generating Algorithms on a specific problem. It wouldn't hurt to put this somewhere where it fits nicely but there is nothing wrong with single-page books as long as they're useful. --Swift (talk) 16:40, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Call for proposals for Wikimedia UK initiatives
Hi all. The Wikimedia UK board has been putting together a budget for the next year (You can see this, and help with its development, here) and we have some money left over. We are looking for proposals for projects/iniatives with budget requirements in the range of £100-£3000 (GBP). These projects can be either online or offline, but they should be primarily focused on the UK and they must further the objects of Wikimedia UK (broadly, to collate/develop/spread freely licensed material).

The deadline for proposals is the end of this month (i.e. 0:00 UTC on 1 March 2010). You can find more details of the requirements, and how to submit proposals, on our blog. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Ubisoft images
Just informing you that the Ubisoft images are about to be deleted on Commons, see commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Template:Attribution-Ubisoft 3. Wikibooks currently uses images out of the category Ubisoft images. If you want to keep using them, you need to transfer them here. --The Evil IP address (talk) 19:31, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads-up. With 537 images it may take a while, so some assistance from other admins here will be useful as we only have a couple of weeks to transfer any with a FU rationale. <font color="#E66C2C">QU <font color="#306754">TalkQu 23:07, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Having said that, we don't seem to use any of these images. <font color="#E66C2C">QU <font color="#306754">TalkQu 23:11, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Darklama quietly took care of the one we were using in the two places it was used and it has been replaced with a free alternative. -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:24, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ya we were using only one image in two places and I took care of them already. Ubisoft is a electronic games company so I cannot see Wikibooks needing any of the game screenshots since strategy guides and walkthroughs are outside our scope. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  23:26, 28 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Good stuff, although we do seem to have a number of other game images, or so I remember when I was trawling my way through a load of non-free images a while back to clean-up the FU rationale. Might be mistaken though. <font color="#E66C2C">QU <font color="#306754">TalkQu 23:31, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Correct spelling in title
I am brand new using anything wiki and am having a very hard with our Wikibook. The first challenge is that I see that I misspelled the title (or inadvertently did something to change it.) Help, please. Ppa-db (talk) 21:50, 27 February 2010 (UTC)Diane


 * See the help message posted to your talk page. You can move pages to rename them. --Swift (talk) 18:17, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

PDF Version template
Is there a problem with information on PDF versions stored on Commons instead of locally? The French book has a PDF version, and uses the PDF version template on French/Cover but that just seems to produce a message about "vaporware". The front page of the French book does not show the small PDF icon, and the Featured books page does not show any PDF for French. Recent Runes (talk) 19:43, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Wikibooks relies on files existing locally for categorization and for some templates. I suggest a work around for that would be to goto the page locally and add a category so that PDF files based on our books are categorized locally. That should also take care of the problem with templates. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  19:50, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, adding the French category to File:French.pdf seems to have done the trick! Thanks Recent Runes (talk) 22:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Comments in local time (option in prefs)
Is turned on affects the Template:dynamic navigation or Template:hidden (it will not fold/hide), using at least the Classic skin. --Panic (talk) 12:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Starting a book for computer beginers
Hello everybody, I'm just writing to say hello and declare my intentions. Basically, its my experience that lots of people have no idea how computers work, so I want to fix that. The current book on the site is really good at explaining what things are, and how to use them, but I want to take a different track: I want to make the reader know why computers are the way they are.

As an example: in making a manual for a car, you could just include instructions for changing the oil, tires and air filter. But what'd be really good is a manual that told you how the engine generates power, how the oil keeps things going, and how the cooling systems works. A car owner with such a manual would know things about their car without having to be explicitly told, because they understand the basic idea of how thing should work.

When it's all said and done, I want a book that I can hand to my grandma, and which she can read without fear or confusion. And hopefully when she's done reading it, she'll be able to do anything with a computer that she wants to, or anything she wants to learn about.

So, that's the idea. I'll have more specifics of the philosophy of the book on the book page itself.

Peace, --Jdbaker (talk) 07:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)-


 * Good luck with your project. You may be interested in Help:Starting a new page or book but the rest of the help pages can be accessed at Help:Contents (or from the "Help" link in the navigation box, under the logo). --Swift (talk) 19:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)